Orquestra Geração

Ana plays in a school orchestra set up in a disadvantaged district in Greater Lisbon. But, after a frustrating maze of corridors, she opens a door into a theatre workshop rather than a music class. “Where will you be in ten years?” This question provides the filmmakers with an opportunity to outline their programme: from out of the chaos of doors leading nowhere, a profusion of futures gradually opens up. In their previous film Li ké terra, Cape Verdian teenagers placed utmost importance on the words they used. Here again, dreams of the future depend on a precision in the here and now – for instance, in the way fingers are positioned on a violin. But Orquestra Geraçao is not simple a chronicle of apprenticeship. It adventures freely onto a beach where a football match is being played, and into family intimacy – fragments of daily life that are never reduced to their purely sociological content. “What’s music?”, asks the drama teacher. “Something that can’t be an object or a feeling”, replies a student. Reis and Miller Guerra seem to have adopted this intangible intensity as the motto for their discreet and generous approach.